The Pareto principle on a daily basis

"Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent."

- Carl Sandburg

Now that I am on sick leave, I have a lot of free time, which I can use in many different ways. Although I don't do anything particularly demanding for most of the day, those few chosen activities, such as reading, writing, singing, learning Spanish or meditating, have a significant impact on my wellbeing and efficiency for the rest of the day. None of them take up too much of my time, but they make a big difference. You can see an analogy here with the Pareto Principle, also known as the '20/80 rule'.

Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist at the turn of the 20th century, is widely known as the creator of this principle. It states that the distribution of many characteristics takes on a ratio of 20 to 80%, e.g. about 80% of revenue is generated by about 20% of customers. In practice, applying the Pareto Principle can help us to manage our time better, so that a small change in our daily activities will produce noticeable results.

The Pareto Principle can also be applied to your personal life. It is worth considering which friendships are really valuable to us and focusing on them. By focusing on the relationships that are most rewarding and emotionally profitable, we can create deeper and more satisfying bonds with the people we care about. At the same time, we don't waste time maintaining less valuable friendships. Perhaps as many as 80% of relationships are not particularly important to us, and it is worth spending more time on the 20% that are.

Similarly, when it comes to pursuing our passions and developing our skills, it is worth applying the Pareto Principle. By focusing on the activities that give us the most satisfaction and have a positive impact on our lives, we can better manage our time and energy. In this way, even if we only spend 20 per cent of our time developing our passions, we can achieve 80 per cent of the results we want, which ultimately leads to greater satisfaction and a sense of fulfilment in life.